Street Crossing Issues for Persons With Cognitive Disabilities

"For persons with cognitive disabilities, crossing an intersection is an extremely complex and difficult task to master. Individuals with cognitive disabilities have impairments that affect their daily functioning skills, including their ability to process the information necessary to navigate street crossings safely. Although research is beginning to identify the needs of visually impaired pedestrians, the challenges facing persons with cognitive impairments, which are not always the same, remain largely unaddressed. This paper discusses issues and skills affecting safe crossing by persons with cognitive disabilities, and calls for research to identify design features, signalization and technologies that can enable users with cognitive disabilities to cross safely. For such individuals, this can facilitate the use of public transportation and represent the difference between independence, and reliance on family or costly and cumbersome paratransit."